The rest of me wanted not to run at all. I mean, why rush into the arms of grief if you don’t have to, especially if the person on grief-distribution duty is a certain Major André Charbonneau, ex-soldier, ex-cop, currently employed by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, the armed forces equivalent of a major crimes unit of a large police force. One tough guy—that’s my dad, the Major. And what had I done to deserve grief, you might ask? My current crime was tardiness. Yeah, you heard it right. I was running a little late, which, for anyone in the armed forces, is a major crime. Unless I missed my guess—and I hardly ever do when it comes to my dad—the Major was standing at attention on the front walk of the crappy little house we’d been assigned for this posting, his head swiveling from side to side like he was watching a tennis match, scanning the environs for Yours Truly while steam blew out of his ears. The first words out of his mouth, when he finally saw me, would be: “You see that thing on your wrist?
